As Cyclone Tauktae hurled towards Gujarat with wind speeds exceeding 185 km per hour, it left behind a trail of destruction in neighbouring Maharashtra, killing six people on Monday, while three sailors went missing after two boats sank in the Arabian sea.
In Gujarat, which is facing its worst cyclone in over two decades, over 150,000 people have been evacuated in the last few days. Two barges with 410 people onboard have, meanwhile, been adrift in the Arabian Sea.
“This can be compared with the 1998 cyclone that hit Kandla and inflicted heavy damage,” Reuters quoted the state’s revenue secretary Pankaj Kumar as saying. The 1998 cyclone had killed at least 4,000 people and caused a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.
